theatlantic
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You are viewing stuff tagged with theatlantic.
Sometimes, in the middle of the supermarket, I stop and look around at column after column of frozen food — any food I can imagine, right there for purchase. Think about that, anything I want to eat, I can. Instantly. Just hop in the heated/cooled automatic transportation machine. Sometimes, I can feel the pressure from the thousands of generations that preceded me — tens of thousands of years of suffering and hardship of our ancestors, attempting to find and grow enough food to live. And it makes me think, I’ve gotta do everything I can with this life. I have to act in such a way that honors the fact that I’ve never known hunger, that my life is unbelievably luxurious compared to 99.9% of those who came before me. I must push my potential, seize this moment, make the most of myself. And yet sometimes, I feel an unhappiness, a profound ennui. And it makes me sad, to feel that unworthy and unappreciative of this gift of ease. So, whenever I run across research about happiness, my interest is invariable piqued. In the parts of the world where the hunger problem has been solved, it has been replaced by a happiness problem — but, of course, the answer to unhappiness is much more complex than the answer to hunger.